Greek police round up migrants on Kos, locking them in stadium overnight

ATHENS, Greece — About 1,000 refugees have been locked in a stadium on the island of Kos overnight without food and with very little water, as authorities struggle to contain the rising tide of migrants from war-torn countries, a spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday.

Spokeswoman Julia Kourafa said riot police sent from Athens had swept through the island Tuesday afternoon, clearing refugees — most of them from Syria and Iraq — from public squares and parks, where they had set up encampments while waiting to be issued travel documents.

Doctors Without Borders had a team in the stadium, Kourafa said, and the members of the aid group’s staff said people had been locked inside for 24 hours.

“People are exhausted and hungry and frustrated,” Kourafa said, adding that there were elderly people and women and children being held inside the stadium. “We see people fainting. We see people with medical problems because of the situation. There are not enough water or toilets. There is no provision for food.”

The police also fired tear gas and fire extinguishers in an apparent effort to maintain order outside the stadium, where another 1,000 migrants had gathered, Kourafa said.

She estimated more than 6,000 refugees were on Kos, an island in the southeastern Aegean Sea, waiting to be issued papers by the Greek government that would allow them to move legally inside Greece. Syrians generally receive papers allowing them to stay for six months and Iraqis for 30 days, she said, and without these papers they cannot leave the island.

Kourafa said only three officials were in Kos giving out the documents, leading to a backlog of 10-15 days. The wait has exacerbated the already severe problem of waves of migrants arriving on the island.

“There was an influx of migrants and refugees on the island of Kos in the recent days which was, let’s say, unprecedented, meaning that there are more than 700 to 800 people per day,” said Vassilis Papadopoulos, Greece’s general secretary for migration policy. “And that was not manageable by the police authorities.”

Greece has seen record numbers of migrants from conflict-ridden countries in the first six months of this year. Most do not see Greece as a viable place to stay, especially because of the current economic crisis, and they are trying to move on to other destinations in Europe.